Beyond transparency: Making the Italian public administration more accessible through data storytelling

Abstract

In Italy, the 'Piano AntiCorruzione e Trasparenza' (Anti-corruption and transparency plan), with the reform of the Decree n.33/2013, requires all the public administrations to make their data (financial data, personnel, etc.) public and available, as a matter of transparency. Despite that, we are still far from reaching fully the goal of transparency. Due to the lack of a shared protocol, each administration is free to choose the format to publish and present the data, resulting in a proliferation of different formats, different website structures and table of contents, which makes the exploration and discovering of facts and figures harder. Transparency without accessibility, is a lost opportunity. The paper will discuss these issues in the light of a new design and data storytelling oriented paradigm, intended to turn the mere online publication of data into a more engaging and immersive experience. We focus on a particular case study, the project Data Explorer, a prototype informed by a new way of visualizing and exploring data, with the aim of improving the informative process, and making sense of the transparency and making it accessible to a wider audience.